I was born and raised on the west coast of Scotland where “My Shore” looked out on to the Firth of Clyde and beyond that to the islands of Arran and Ailsa Craig to Ireland and the vast Atlantic. That view from the shore has never left my mind, stored with thousands of other images but still with a power to dominate my visual life. This recollects an exhibition from the 90’s with next door neighbour Katy English whose shore is my horizon on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland and one of whose studio buildings, I occupy as a long term tenant. My Art teacher at Carrick Academy in Maybole was Bill Lockhart and he brought modernism and Jazz and shoreline energy from his house on the coast to starving students in a grey early sixties Maybole. We blossomed and it was recognised as one of the best Art Departments in Scotland with its award winning School Magazine which contained much art work.My parents had to move to what was becoming Swinging London and I followed going to Hornsey College of Art in 1968 and finishing up at Ravensbourne College of Art. Great painters, philosophers and drinkers abounded and the days were a bit halcyon. I ended up rebelling against painting but of course am one of the only ones of my close contemporaries still painting!I think that is the thing with painting, it is a struggle with the self and if the self is prone to rebel or argue then the results can be disturbingly interesting and never concluded in conventional acceptance. Got to go again…I have been fortunate in corresponding with Robert Motherwell, meeting Ruth Kligman (Notorious girlfriend of Jackson Pollack), artists Alan Davie and Albert Irvin painter and musician extrordinaire Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart and many others although there is a degree of the hermit about my relationship with Contemporary Art.